Holyrood Sketch

Wendy Alexander got a round of applause just for standing up yesterday. True, the claps were on her own side, but most audiences prefer to be absolutely certain a politician has shut up before registering gratitude. Perhaps Labour decided to get its ovation in first.

It could become a trend. "Don't bother with the speech!", someone will cry. "You pretend to speak, we'll pretend to listen, and we'll give you a big hand anyway. In fact, if you promise to say nothing at all, we'll raise the roof."

On reflection, Ms Alexander might have preferred it that way. On paper, her first turn as Alex Salmond's interrogator-in-chief must have looked a sure thing. Fuel poverty, senior citizens and broken SNP promises. It was too good to be true.

It was. Acting on information received, the new Labour leader proceeded from the assumption the government is reviewing the scheme to provide OAPs with free central heating. It is. Ms Alexander then noted that the word "targeting" has been employed. It has, sort of.

A low-energy cartoon bulb brightened above the debutante's head. The nefarious Nats are reviewing the scheme, she said, "with targeting or means testing the likely outcome".

An attack on senior citizens? This was good stuff, delivered with confidence.

Even before Mr Salmond had offered the first of several versions of the same answer, however, you began to wonder.

What politician in his right mind duffs up OAPs?

Who would be silly enough to tamper with a scheme, albeit a Labour one, that has brought warmth and light to 80,000 homes? A minority government can't afford to alienate 80,000 voters.

The First Minister said, in effect, that Ms Alexander's claim was inaccurate but broadly correct.

The government is indeed reviewing the scheme, but only "as a means of improving it".

Yeah, right, his opponent almost said. You sensed a subconscious Labour problem. Surely, they seemed to think, a review could only mean what it always means when they are in power - cuts all round.

Ms Alexander ploughed on. "Is that review under way," she demanded, "or have you simply ditched it because you've once again been rumbled?"

The First Minister seemed slightly uncomfortable at the start of the exchange, perhaps because he was worried Ms Alexander was going to bury him under the weight of detailed analysis for which she is renowned and he, shall we say, is not.

Now his confidence, never far from the vicinity, returned. Better still, he realised he could confine himself to a single, repeated answer. Another triumph for his renewable energy policies.

"The First Minister is ducking the question," insisted Ms Alexander, who still wanted to know how targets can be applied to a universal scheme.

"I'm answering Wendy Alexander's questions very precisely," Mr Salmond replied. "It's not my fault if she can't think of the right questions."

Not in the least - which is to say infinitely - patronising, he gave it his third shot.

The purpose of the review, he said "is to see an enhanced and improved scheme". In particular, the government wants to address the issue of waiting lists.

The ambush had failed. The ambush was in a bit more disarray, in fact, when the First Minister noted that the number of people in fuel poverty actually rose under the previous administration.

Ms Alexander had mounted an able enough assault, but it's tricky when you try to storm a citadel armed with a damp squib.